thanks , i have already tried your advice but it did not work.

i bought a lynksis router saturday night at 4in the morning at amazon.com. it was the right thing to do. i waited to take it out of the box and it worked like butter. it is even faster than the airport. they had a cd that set everything up. i had to call in on how to set up my xp pro box for remote access. it literally took 20 minutes total. It cost me $80 but had i not been so impatient and paid for overnight. it would have been $59. that is with the free shipping amazon is offering right now.

my xp box has firewall software on it so i am very relieved. i have also tried to use this box as a server and it was impossible without that $200 fee from apple or an i.t. degree.